The Betrothed (Annotated)

Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed is a foundational historical novel of nineteenth-century European literature, set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the 1620s. Through the thwarted marriage of Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella, Manzoni interweaves private suffering with public catastrophe: famine, war, injustice, and the plague of 1630. Its lucid, humane prose combines realism, mora...